Monday, May 1, 2017

KN38 HANDLE SHAPING AND FINISHING DETAIL

The next day after the G-flex was hard, I went on to flattening and squaring the surfaces. There's a lot of material to remove, so I started with a 60 grit and used the work rest to get things as close to 90° as possible.

By squaring the faces it makes it easier to get a uniform shape.

Using the work rest on the grinder I knock off the corners at 45°.

Here you can see the shape starting to come together. I repeated this with a 120 grit belt.

Once the shape is close to having the desired hand feel, I'll go on the slack part of the belt and essentially rotate the handle while working across the belt. The slack belt works great with J weight belts. Shown is a 320 grit. The speed of the belt is important to the quality of the finish. Fast moving belts make a very fine finish. The tachometer says 3491 RPMs.

Some wet sanding with 600 and 1000 grit sand paper.

Here we are just about done the handle.
Pay attention to the areas around the back and bottom of the handle.

Once the handle is nice a silky smooth I take the tape off the blade and do a little clean up. I brush some acetone on the excess epoxy and let it sit for a minute.

Then with a brass "chisel" I go lightly and scrape and remove the epoxy from the steel. As brass is softer than hardened steel it doesn't leave scratches on the blade.

To put the cutting edge on, I a 220 grit in slack belt mode. Holding the blade about 20° to the belt with the belt moving AWAY from the edge I make a few very light, quick passes.

Repeat on the other side. I stand to the other side of the grinder to do this. The belt is always moving away from the cutting edge and my body is well out of the way.

Hi Dan. I started making knives (sharpening by hand some knives at first than switched to making the an entire knife) back in 2010 with crazy limited resources (dual grit small whetstone and sandpaper) and much later a filing jig of my own design. At the moment I'm cutting all my material to make my own belt grinder that I'm going to power with a washing machine motor and I was wondering if I could make all the wheels I need for it out of hardwood. What is your opinion? Would really appreciate it.Thank you for all the information you have shared it helped me a lot on my projects, especially the belt grinder design.Thanks so much.

Welcome to the crazy obsession of knifemaking. If you have a the tools to make a concentric wheel that is reasonably balanced then yes. I've seen many wheels made from various woods. Uniform density is preferred for balance, so a laminate of quality plywood may work better for wheels. Let us know how it goes!